St. Albert, Bishop of Jerusalem - September 17 - Carmelite Saints
He was born in a city near Emilia, Italy, and became a Canon Regular of the Holy Cross at Mortara (Pavia). By 1180, he was elected prior there, and then appointed Bishop of Bobbia in 1184. The very next year, he was sent to Vercelli, where he spent the next 20 years, accomplishing missions on the national and international level, becoming known as a person of conviction and prudence. He mediated peace between several cities in Italy. In 1191, he called a diocesan synod, and it was the source of valuable disciplinary provisions which were used until modern times. He served a number of religious orders and was a counsellor in the making of the Rule of the Humiliati.
In 1205, he was elected patriarch of Jerusalem and was then named the papal legate for the ecclesiastical province of Jerusalem. He was in Palestine by early 1206, and had to reside outside Jerusalem, then occupied by the Saracens. So he lived in what is modern day Acre, overlooked by Mt. Carmel. Here is the view of Acre overshadowed by the lovely Mt. Carmel from the 1930s to help you imagine where they were as events unfolded:
St. Brocard, the prior of the hermits living on the mountain asked him to write a Rule for them. It was a very rigorous rule, requiring fasts, permanent abstinence from meat, silence and seclusion.
St. Albert wrote this assent to creating the rule, referencing Scripture:
Many and varied are the ways (cf. Heb 1:1) in which our saintly forefathers laid down how everyone, whatever his station or the kind of religious observance he has chosen, should live a life of allegiance to Jesus Christ (cf. 2 Cor 10:5) — how, pure in heart and steadfast in conscience (cf. 1 Tim 1:5), he must be unswerving in the service of his Master.
Pope Innocent IV mitigated the rule in 1254, allowing that it was too rigorous. In addition to helping the hermits living near the spring of Elijah, by making the original Carmelite rule, he again worked as a peacemaker as he had in Italy, not just among Christians, but also between them and non-Christians. On September 14th, 1241, he was stabbed to death in a procession on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross by the Master of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit because St. Albert had removed him from that post due to the man’s evil life. The commentary by Possanzini on his Mass for his feast reveals the following:
“This Saint is celebrated as the lawgiver of the Order, and as his Formula of life is centered on constant meditation of the Holy Scripture and prayer . . . [it] is a call to the Bible, the foundation of the contemplative and apostolic vocation of Carmel . . . a formula of evangelical life to guide us to perfect charity, grasping the central point of the propositum of Carmelites: ‘ to live in allegiance to Jesus Christ, and to serve Him with pure heart and stout conscience.’ Thus faithful observance leads us to perfect love of God and our neighbour.”
So let us see that from these roots, our mission to live, light and lead others to union with God and love of neighbor grows true and straight. Let us be encouraged that God works among His people to invite us to love Him and serve Him in prayer, in meditation which both lead us to Eucharist, where we are all drawn together in community. Let us be willing to give our lives to making peace, and facing evil without fear.
Very pertinent to our time, where the unrest in the Holy Land has not diminished, he is an example of a mediator for peace among Christian peoples and princes and between Muslim leaders and Christians. So let us ask for his intercession, and beg for the mercy of God to prevail in that land now suffering from violence. St. Albert, Bishop of Jerusalem, giver of the Carmelite rule, mediator for peace, pray for the Holy Land.
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